BERLIN: German authorities said Friday they took down the country’s largest Internet marketplace for narcotics and arrested 11 suspects from Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.
Police and prosecutors said in a statement that they worked for more than a year to smash Chemical Revolution, which sold amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, cannabis, ecstasy, LSD and other synthetic drugs.
Accepting Bitcoin payments, the site started operations in September 2017 and was allegedly run by a 26-year-old German man. He has been in custody since May.
The latest suspects arrested — eight Germans aged 24 to 35, two Poles aged 32 and 44 and a 43-year-old Dutchman — managed the acquisition, packaging, transport and distribution of the illicit wares.
The police operation made its first swoop in early 2018 with the arrest of a German man in the eastern state of Brandenburg found with a significant stash of drugs at his home.
Between February and May 2019, German investigators working with colleagues in Poland, the Netherlands, France and Spain arrested another 10 suspects.
The statement by authorities Friday did not provide information on the total amount of drugs sold on the site or its revenues before it was shut down.
In May, German authorities announced that they had dismantled the world’s second largest darknet market.
The “Wall Street Market” site traded in narcotics as well as stolen data, fake documents and malicious software.
The encrypted platform had more than one million customer accounts, over 5,000 registered sellers and more than 60,000 sales listings.
Investigators believe the operators of Chemical Revolution also sold drugs on Wall Street Market.
Police smash Germany’s biggest online drug market
Police smash Germany’s biggest online drug market
- Accepting Bitcoin payments, Chemical Revolution started operations in September 2017
- Internet marketplace sold amphetamines, cocaine, heroin, cannabis, ecstasy, LSD and other synthetic drugs
More than 9,000 flights canceled as major winter storm bears down across much of US
- “Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are spreading into the area and will remain in place into Monday,” the agency said on X
DALLAS: More than 9,000 flights across the US set to take off over the weekend have been canceled as a major storm expected to wreak havoc across much of the country threatens to knock out power for days and snarl major roadways.
Roughly 140 million people were under a winter storm warning from New Mexico to New England.
The National Weather Service forecast warns of widespread heavy snow and a band of catastrophic ice stretching from east Texas to North Carolina.
Forecasters say damage, especially in areas pounded by ice, could rival that of a hurricane.
Ice and sleet that hit northern Texas overnight were moving toward the central part of the state on Saturday, the National Weather Service in Fort Worth said.
“Dangerously cold temperatures and wind chills are spreading into the area and will remain in place into Monday,” the agency said on X.
Low temperatures will be mostly in the single digits for the next few nights, with wind chills as low as minus 24 Celsius.
About 68,000 power outages were reported across the country at 8 a.m. ET, about 27,600 of them in Texas. Snow and sleet continued to fall in Oklahoma.
After sweeping through the South, the storm was expected to move into the Northeast, dumping about a foot of snow from Washington through New York and Boston, the weather service predicted.
Temperatures reached minus 34 C just before dawn in rural Lewis County and other parts of upstate New York after days of heavy snow.
Governors in more than a dozen states sounded the alarm about the turbulent weather ahead, declaring emergencies or urging people to stay home.
